99% of it is about chucking fakers (ooohhh my back) onto the dole instead.
I'd like to tell you a story.
Once a week I travel to town for a supervised "job search" session. Back in March, I struck up a conversation with one of my "colleagues"; what he told me left me utterly dumbfounded.
To look at, there's nothing exceptional about this young man; early 20s (I guess), presentable, intelligent, quietly-spoken; you wouldn't give him a second glance if he sat next to you on a bus. On the outside, he looks fit and healthy, but on the inside, it's a different story.
He suffers from a condition called "osteolysis".
I understand this is a rare auto-immune disorder that results in the calcium being leached from his bones - in short, his bones are dissolving inside him. He's in constant pain; every time he moves, the bones in his joints rub against, and abrade, each other. He's permanently dosed up with pain-killers, which make him drowsy and affect his sleep patterns, causing a sort of drug-induced narcolepsy which makes him fall asleep at unpredictable times. He has letters from his GP, his consultant, and his surgeon all saying that he's not fit for work; but it's an invisible disease, and when he goes for his ATOS exam, the examiner takes one look at him and says "you look fit, go and get a job" - for which read "eff off and die, you freeloader", because an early death from renal failure (due to a build up of calcium in his kidneys) is a real possibility he faces.
Like me, once a week he has to make a 30-mile round trip to attend the "job search" sessions. He can claim for the cost of the train journey to get there, but he can't claim the taxi fare for the 3/4 mile journey from the station to the venue, so he has to walk or bus it. He can't get a job, because no-one will employ him (he can't get a CAP placement for the same reasons), so every week he wastes an afternoon of what life is left to him staring at a computer screen (which he could do perfectly well at home, if there was any point) and then goes home again.
This young man has done nothing to deserve being treated like this. He deserves compassion, support and specialised help. With the right sort of help, he might even find a way of making a contribution to society that doesn't compromise his health, but it seems the best this government can offer him is to treat him like a naughty schoolboy, and make his health and stress levels worse by subjecting him to this empty, pointless and painful ritual every week, purely in the name of "deficit reduction". The sheer inhumanity of it beggars belief.
He has a plan, though. He's got some part-time bar work, and he's going to do that until he's ill enough to be hospitalised, just to get some peace and get off the treadmill. I haven't seen him since we talked, so I presume this is what he's doing. I wish him luck.
Are you suggesting he's a faker?